I am finishing off my PhD in the Department of Performance Studies at the University of Sydney. It's a very interdisciplinary space - we have researchers working on everything from using phenomenology to improving the way we record oral histories to using theatrical training to sharpen the skills of rugby players. There are graphic novelists who want to understand the secrets to creative collaboration, mountain bikers who want to examine neural and motor skill transfer by learning the trapeze and theorists who unpack fashion blogging. Set against that eclectic backdrop, you make extraordinary connections every day!

My own work tries to uncover patterns of engagement across a national cultural spectrum. I have been questioned by academics at conferences who are suspicious of what one termed the "looseness" of this kind of approach. My response is always to suggest that knowledge doesn't lie in neatly delineated disciplines - the world is a complicated, messy place that we experience bodily, immersively, complexly. For me, doing justice to this experience requires both the freedom to explore the periphery and the discipline to hold a centre. Interdisciplinary findings are more than happy accidents: they are the result of the coming together of long hours - in many cases, a lifetime - of questioning, of experiencing and careful exploration. ...and I'm excited to be a part of the III's inaugural publication that promises to do just that.